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Mohammad Atta Allowed To Escape One Year Before 9/11

WASHINGTON, Aug. 8 - More than a year before the Sept. 11 attacks, a small, highly classified military intelligence unit identified Mohammed Atta and three other future hijackers as likely members of a cell of Al Qaeda operating in the United States, according to a former defense intelligence official and a Republican member of Congress.

In the summer of 2000, the military team, known as Able Danger, prepared a chart that included visa photographs of the four men and recommended to the military's Special Operations Command that the information be shared with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the congressman, Representative Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania, and the former intelligence official said Monday.

The recommendation was rejected and the information was not shared, they said, apparently at least in part because Mr. Atta, and the others were in the United States on valid entry visas. Under American law, United States citizens and green-card holders may not be singled out in intelligence-collection operations by the military or intelligence agencies. That protection does not extend to visa holders, but Mr. Weldon and the former intelligence official said it might have reinforced a sense of discomfort common before Sept. 11 about sharing intelligence information with a law enforcement agency.

A former spokesman for the Sept. 11 commission, Al Felzenberg, confirmed that members of its staff, including Philip Zelikow, the executive director, were told about the program on an overseas trip in October 2003 that included stops in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But Mr. Felzenberg said the briefers did not mention Mr. Atta's name.

The report produced by the commission last year does not mention the episode.

Mr. Weldon first spoke publicly about the episode in June, in a little-noticed speech on the House floor and in an interview with The Times-Herald in Norristown, Pa. The matter resurfaced on Monday in a report by GSN: Government Security News, which is published every two weeks and covers domestic-security issues. The GSN report was based on accounts provided by Mr. Weldon and the same former intelligence official, who was interviewed on Monday by The New York Times in Mr. Weldon's office.

In a telephone interview from his home in Pennsylvania, Mr. Weldon said he was basing his assertions on similar ones by at least three other former intelligence officers with direct knowledge of the project, and said that some had first called the episode to his attention shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

The account is the first assertion that Mr. Atta, an Egyptian who became the lead hijacker in the plot, was identified by any American government agency as a potential threat before the Sept. 11 attacks. Among the 19 hijackers, only Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi had been identified as potential threats by the Central Intelligence Agency before the summer of 2000, and information about them was not provided to the F.B.I. until the spring of 2001.

Mr. Weldon has long been a champion of the kind of data-mining analysis that was the basis for the work of the Able Danger team.

The former intelligence official spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying he did not want to jeopardize political support and the possible financing for future data-mining operations by speaking publicly. He said the team had been established by the Special Operations Command in 1999, under a classified directive issued by Gen. Hugh Shelton, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to assemble information about Al Qaeda networks around the world.

"Ultimately, Able Danger was going to give decision makers options for taking out Al Qaeda targets," the former defense intelligence official said.

He said that he delivered the chart in summer 2000 to the Special Operations Command headquarters in Tampa, Fla., and said that it had been based on information from unclassified sources and government records, including those of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

"We knew these were bad guys, and we wanted to do something about them," the former intelligence official said.

The unit, which relied heavily on data-mining techniques, was modeled after those first established by Army intelligence at the Land Information Warfare Assessment Center, now known as the Information Dominance Center, at Fort Belvoir, Va., the official said.

Mr. Weldon is an outspoken figure who is a vice chairman of both the House Armed Services Committee and the House Homeland Security Committee. He said he had recognized the significance of the episode only recently, when he contacted members of the military intelligence team as part of research for his book, "Countdown to Terror: The Top-Secret Information That Could Prevent the Next Terrorist Attack on America and How the C.I.A. Has Ignored It."

Mr. Weldon's book prompted one veteran C.I.A. case officer to strongly dispute the reliability of one Iranian source cited in the book, saying the Iranian "was a waste of my time and resources."

Mr. Weldon said that he had discussed the Able Danger episode with Representative Peter Hoekstra, the Michigan Republican who is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and that at least two Congressional committees were looking into the episode.

In the interview on Monday, Mr. Weldon said he had been aware of the episode since shortly after the Sept. 11 attack, when members of the team first brought it to his attention. He said he had told Stephen J. Hadley, then the deputy national security adviser, about it in a conversation in September or October 2001, and had been surprised when the Sept. 11 commission report made no mention of the operation.

Col. Samuel Taylor, a spokesman for the military's Special Operations Command, said no one at the command now had any knowledge of the Able Danger program, its mission or its findings. If the program existed, Colonel Taylor said, it was probably a highly classified "special access program" on which only a few military personnel would have been briefed.

During the interview in Mr. Weldon's office, the former defense intelligence official showed a floor-sized chart depicting Al Qaeda networks around the world that he said was a larger, more detailed version similar to the one prepared by the Able Danger team in the summer of 2000.

He said the original chart, like the new one, had included the names and photographs of Mr. Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, as well as Mr. Mihdhar and Mr. Hazmi, who were identified as members of what was described as an American-based "Brooklyn" cell, as one of five such Al Qaeda cells around the world.

The official said the link to Brooklyn was meant as a term of art rather than to be interpreted literally, saying that the unit had produced no firm evidence linking the men to the borough of New York City but that a computer analysis seeking to establish patterns in links between the four men had found that "the software put them all together in Brooklyn."

According to the commission report, Mr. Mihdhar and Mr. Hazmi were first identified in late 1999 or 2000 by the C.I.A. as Qaeda members who might be involved in a terrorist operation. They were tracked from Yemen to Malaysia before their trail was lost in Thailand. Neither man was put on a State Department watch list before they flew to Los Angeles in early 2000. The F.B.I. was not warned about them until the spring of 2001, and no efforts to track them were made until August 2001.

Neither Mr. Shehhi nor Mr. Atta was identified by the American intelligence agencies as a potential threat, the commission report said. Mr. Shehhi arrived in Newark on a flight from Brussels on May 29, 2000, and Mr. Atta arrived in Newark from Prague on June 3 that year.

The former intelligence official said the first Able Danger report identified all four men as members of a "Brooklyn" cell, and was produced within two months after Mr. Atta arrived in the United States. The former intelligence official said he was among a group that briefed Mr. Zelikow and at least three other members of the Sept. 11 commission staff about Able Danger when they visited the Afghanistan-Pakistan region in October 2003.

The official said he had explicitly mentioned Mr. Atta as a member of a Qaeda cell in the United States. He said the staff encouraged him to call the commission when he returned to Washington at the end of the year. When he did so, the ex-official said, the calls were not returned.

Mr. Felzenberg, the former Sept. 11 commission spokesman, said on Monday that he had talked with some of the former staff members who participated in the briefing.

"They all say that they were not told anything about a Brooklyn cell," Mr. Felzenberg said. "They were told about the Pentagon operation. They were not told about the Brooklyn cell. They said that if the briefers had mentioned anything that startling, it would have gotten their attention."

As a result of the briefing, he said, the commission staff filed document requests with the Pentagon for information about the program. The Pentagon complied, he said, adding that the staff had not hidden anything from the commissioners.

"The commissioners were certainly told of the document requests and what the findings were," Mr. Felzenberg said.

A U.S. military intelligence unit knew 9/11 ringleader Mohamed Atta was running a terrorist cell in Brooklyn a year before the World Trade Center attacks - but did nothing about it, it was reported yesterday.

Atta escaped arrest even though investigators in an Army intel program called Able Danger got the goods on him and recommended the FBI be called in to "take out that cell."

A hands-off order was slapped on the cell because, at the time, intelligence agencies were prohibited from spying on Americans, and the military believed that prohibition extended to foreigners with green cards, the Government Security News said in a story posted on its Web site.

GSN said the stunning revelation that authorities botched an opportunity to nab Atta and possibly prevent the attacks that claimed nearly 2,800 lives was made by Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.).

Weldon is vice chairman of both the Homeland Security and House Armed Services committees.

In a little-noticed House speech in June, Weldon said, "So now, Mr. Speaker, for the first time I can tell our colleagues that one of our agencies not only identified the New York cell of Mohamed Atta and two of the terrorists, but actually made a recommendation to bring the FBI in to take out that cell."

A former Able Danger officer corroborated the details of Weldon's claims for GSN.

He recalled carrying documents to the offices of Able Danger, which was being run by the Special Operations Command, headquartered in Tampa.

The documents included a photo of Atta supplied by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, and they described Atta's relationship with terror mastermind Osama Bin Laden.

"We were directed to take those 3M yellow stickers and place them over the faces of Atta and the other terrorists and pretend they didn't exist," the intelligence officer told GSN.

Mohammed Atta and three other men who hijacked aircraft on September 11, 2001 were identified by the US Government as possible members of an al-Qaeda cell more than a year before the attacks, it was reported today.

A highly classified military intelligence unit prepared a chart showing likely al-Qaeda cells in the summer of 2000, which showed the names and photographs of the four men, according to The New York Times.

The secret military team, known as Able Danger, recommended that the identities of the four men be shared with the FBI and other parts of the military, but the recommendation was never taken up, according to a Republican Congressman, Curt Weldon, quoted by the newspaper.

Mr Weldon's account, and the information provided by an unnamed military official to The New York Times, constitute the first claim that Atta, the lead hijacker on 9/11, had been identified as a possible terrorist before the attacks took place.

Until now, only two of the 19 hijackers, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi, were known to have been identified by US government agencies as threats to American security.

The CIA tracked the men through 2000 before passing their information to the FBI in the spring of 2001.

According to Mr Weldon, who said he has tried to share this information since September 2001, when it first came to his notice, the risk posed by Atta and his cohorts never spread through America'a law enforcement agencies because of the uneasy co-operation between the FBI and the military.

Mr Weldon, a Congressman from Pennsylvania, is a vice chairman of both the House Armed Services Committee and the House Homeland Security Committee.

The 9/11 Commission, appointed to investigate the causes and intelligence failures that led to the events of September 11, did not include information gathered by Able Danger in its report, which was published last year, even though the Commission learned of its existence in 2003, according to the newspaper.

The classified military intelligence unit used sophisticated "data mining" techniques, which process huge amounts of data to find patterns, to identify Atta and the three other men as likely members of an al-Qaeda cell within two months of their arrival in America in 2000.

According to the article, The New York Times was shown a chart similar to the one drawn up by the military team in the summer of 2000.

The "floor-sized chart" showed the names and photographs of Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, as well as al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi, as making up an US-based al-Qaeda cell known as the "Brooklyn cell".

According to the anonymous military intelligence source quoted by the newspaper, when the chart was completed it was delivered to the Special Operations Command of the US military, under whose authority the secret team worked.

"We knew these were the bad guys, and we wanted to do something about them," the official told the newspaper.

A spokesman for the US Special Operations Command told The New York Times, that no one at the command now had "any knowledge of the Able Danger program, its mission or its findings".

Shocking 9/11 Revelations

[I know this touches on verboten conspiracy theories, but this is a front-page NYT article]

According to today's New York Times, a top secret unit of military intelligence identified four of the 9/11 hijackers as Al-Qaeda members in the summer of 2000.

More than a year before the Sept. 11 attacks, a small, highly classified military intelligence unit identified Mohammed Atta and three other future hijackers as likely members of a cell of Al Qaeda operating in the United States, according to a former defense intelligence official and a Republican member of Congress.

In the summer of 2000, the military team, known as Able Danger, prepared a chart that included visa photographs of the four men and recommended to the military's Special Operations Command that the information be shared with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the congressman, Representative Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania, and the former intelligence official said Monday.

BooMan23's diary :: ::

This is a huge story. It's mind-boggling, and I can't even begin to describe the implications in a diary. Before I even try, I am going to skip ahead in the article and then give you a segment of my Mohammed Atta timeline, for your consideration. Pay special attention to the word 'Brooklyn'.

During the interview in Mr. Weldon's office, the former defense intelligence official showed a floor-sized chart depicting Al Qaeda networks around the world that he said was a larger, more detailed version similar to the one prepared by the Able Danger team in the summer of 2000.

He said the original chart, like the new one, had included the names and photographs of Mr. Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, as well as Mr. Mihdhar and Mr. Hazmi, who were identified as members of what was described as an American-based "Brooklyn" cell, as one of five such Al Qaeda cells around the world.

The official said the link to Brooklyn was meant as a term of art rather than to be interpreted literally, saying that the unit had produced no firm evidence linking the men to the borough of New York City but that a computer analysis seeking to establish patterns in links between the four men had found that "the software put them all together in Brooklyn."

Okay. This top secret Pentagon unit used 'data mining' to establish the presence of all four hijackers in Brooklyn at the same time. We know this was sometime during, or before, the summer of 2000. Now, look at my Mohammed Atta timeline. Scan down to June 6th, 2000. This is three days after Mohammed Atta officially arrived in the United States for the first time.

1/17/1999 German intelligence hears the names Mohammed Atta, Ramzi and Said on Zammar's phone.

9/1/1999 BJ's Wholesale Club, a store in Hollywood, Florida, later tells the FBI that Atta may have held a BJ's membership card since at least this time.

9/21/1999 German intelligence hears Atta's full name on a phone call from Zammar to Al-shehhi

10/12/1999 Gen. Musharraf takes over Pakistan in a coup

11/27/1999 Atta, Marwan Alshehhi and Ziad Jarrah and associates Ramzi bin al-Shibh and Said Bahaji (all members of the same Hamburg, Germany cell) arrive separately in Afghanistan around this time

11/28/1999

11/29/1999

11/30/1999 Jordan uncovers plot to bomb Radisson Hotel in Amman

12/14/1999 Millenium bomber is arrested in Washington State

12/15/1999 late Dec. reports passport missing

1/1/2000 AFP, Beliner Zeitung report Atta is under CIA surveillance this year in Germany

1/2/2000

1/3/2000 failed attack on the USS Sullivans in Yemen

3/1/2000 emails unidentifed flight school in Lakeland, Fl

3/22/2000 e-mails Airman Flight School in Norman, OK

3/23/2000

3/24/2000

3/25/2000

3/26/2000

3/27/2000

3/28/2000

3/29/2000

3/30/2000

3/31/2000

4/1/2000 reportedly seen frequently at Portland Me. Library this spring

4/2/2000

4/16/2000

4/17/2000 FBI Agent Ken Williams' memo on Arizona flight schools

4/18/2000

4/19/2000

4/20/2000

4/21/2000

4/22/2000

4/23/2000

4/24/2000

4/25/2000

4/26/2000

4/27/2000 Late April to mid-May Atta reportedly has a very strange meeting with Johnelle Bryant of the US Department of Agriculture

4/28/2000

4/29/2000

4/30/2000

5/1/2000 issued an Egyptian passport in Hamburg for one he claimed he lost

5/2/2000

5/3/2000

5/4/2000

5/5/2000

5/6/2000

5/7/2000

5/8/2000

5/9/2000

5/10/2000

5/11/2000

5/12/2000

5/13/2000

5/14/2000

5/15/2000

5/16/2000

5/17/2000

5/18/2000 US Berlin Embassy issues him visa

5/19/2000

5/20/2000

5/21/2000

5/22/2000

5/23/2000

5/24/2000

5/25/2000

5/26/2000

5/27/2000

5/28/2000

5/29/2000

5/30/2000 flies to Prague, denied entry, flies back to Germany

5/31/2000

6/1/2000 Atta goes to Czech consulate and obtains proper visa

6/2/2000 arrives in Prague by bus (allegedly meets with Iraqi spy)

6/3/2000 Atta supposedly arrives in the US for the first time, flying from Prague to Newark on a tourist visa issued May 18 in Berlin

6/4/2000 In June, Atta and other hijackers begin to open bank accounts in Florida. At least 35 accounts are opened, 14 of them at SunTrust Bank. All are opened with fake social security numbers (some with randomly made up numbers), yet none of the accounts are checked or questioned by the banks

7/18/2000 flies at Huffman...between this day and 9/18/00 receives $109,500 in SunTrust Bank joint account with al Shehhi

7/19/2000 flies at Huffman

7/20/2000 flies at Huffman

7/21/2000 flies at Huffman

7/22/2000 flies at Huffman

7/23/2000

7/24/2000 flies at Huffman

7/25/2000 DEA in Orlando discovered more than 30 pounds of heroin inside a Learjet owned by Wally Hilliard, owner of Huffman Aviation...flies at Huffman

7/26/2000 flies at Huffman

7/27/2000 flies at Huffman

7/28/2000 flies at Huffman

7/29/2000

7/30/2000 flies at Huffman

7/31/2000 flies at Huffman

8/1/2000 flies at Huffman

8/2/2000 flies at Huffman

8/3/2000 flies at Huffman

8/4/2000

8/5/2000

8/6/2000 flies at Huffman

8/7/2000 flies at Huffman

8/8/2000 flies at Huffman

8/9/2000

8/10/2000

8/11/2000

8/12/2000

8/13/2000 Boston Globe, 8/4/02

8/14/2000 In a wiretapped conversation from this day, suspected Yemeni terrorist Abdulsalam Ali Abdulrahman tells wanted Egyptian terrorist Es Sayed about a massive strike against the enemies of Islam involving aircraft and the sky, a blow that "will be written about in all the newspapers of the world. This will be one of those strikes that will never be forgotten.... This is a terrifying thing. This is a thing that will spread from south to north, from east to west: The person who came up with this program is a madman from a madhouse, a madman but a genius."

8/15/2000

8/16/2000

8/17/2000

8/18/2000

8/19/2000

8/20/2000

8/21/2000

8/22/2000

8/23/2000

8/24/2000

8/25/2000

8/26/2000

8/27/2000

8/28/2000

8/29/2000 Huffman put in for student visa

8/30/2000

8/31/2000

9/1/2000

9/2/2000

9/3/2000

9/4/2000

9/5/2000

9/6/2000

9/7/2000

9/8/2000

9/9/2000

9/10/2000

9/11/2000

9/12/2000

9/13/2000

9/14/2000

9/15/2000

9/16/2000

9/17/2000

9/18/2000 $69,985 is wired from the UAE into the ATTA-AL-SHEHHI joint account.

9/19/2000

9/20/2000

9/21/2000

9/22/2000

9/23/2000

9/24/2000 late September Atta and al-Shehhi enrol in Jones Aviation in Sarasota.

9/25/2000

9/26/2000

9/27/2000

9/28/2000

9/29/2000

9/30/2000

10/1/2000

10/2/2000

10/3/2000 early October, takes and fails Stage One exam at Jones Aviation, and returns to Huffman

continued

Now, let's continue with the article. The top secret unit informed the Special Operations Command about four of the hijackers and recommended the FBI be informed of their presence in the United States.

The recommendation was rejected and the information was not shared, they said, apparently at least in part because Mr. Atta, and the others were in the United States on valid entry visas. Under American law, United States citizens and green-card holders may not be singled out in intelligence-collection operations by the military or intelligence agencies. That protection does not extend to visa holders, but Mr. Weldon and the former intelligence official said it might have reinforced a sense of discomfort common before Sept. 11 about sharing intelligence information with a law enforcement agency.

This is grasping at straws. The law did not apply to mere visa holders. The bottom line is that there is no good reason for such a request to be rejected. But it goes further than that. A lot further. First of all, the 9/11 Commission was given this information and they covered it up. In fact, it appears the information was concealed from the full panel.

A former spokesman for the Sept. 11 commission, Al Felzenberg, confirmed that members of its staff, including Philip Zelikow, the executive director, were told about the program on an overseas trip in October 2003 that included stops in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But Mr. Felzenberg said the briefers did not mention Mr. Atta's name.

The report produced by the commission last year does not mention the episode.[snip]

The former intelligence official spoke on the condition of anonymity, saying he did not want to jeopardize political support and the possible financing for future data-mining operations by speaking publicly. He said the team had been established by the Special Operations Command in 1999, under a classified directive issued by Gen. Hugh Shelton, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to assemble information about Al Qaeda networks around the world.

"Ultimately, Able Danger was going to give decision makers options for taking out Al Qaeda targets," the former defense intelligence official said.

He said that he delivered the chart in summer 2000 to the Special Operations Command headquarters in Tampa, Fla., and said that it had been based on information from unclassified sources and government records, including those of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

"We knew these were bad guys, and we wanted to do something about them," the former intelligence official said. [snip]

Neither Mr. Shehhi nor Mr. Atta was identified by the American intelligence agencies as a potential threat, the commission report said. Mr. Shehhi arrived in Newark on a flight from Brussels on May 29, 2000, and Mr. Atta arrived in Newark from Prague on June 3 that year.

The former intelligence official said the first Able Danger report identified all four men as members of a "Brooklyn" cell, and was produced within two months after Mr. Atta arrived in the United States. The former intelligence official said he was among a group that briefed Mr. Zelikow and at least three other members of the Sept. 11 commission staff about Able Danger when they visited the Afghanistan-Pakistan region in October 2003.

The official said he had explicitly mentioned Mr. Atta as a member of a Qaeda cell in the United States. He said the staff encouraged him to call the commission when he returned to Washington at the end of the year. When he did so, the ex-official said, the calls were not returned.

Mr. Felzenberg, the former Sept. 11 commission spokesman, said on Monday that he had talked with some of the former staff members who participated in the briefing.

"They all say that they were not told anything about a Brooklyn cell," Mr. Felzenberg said. "They were told about the Pentagon operation. They were not told about the Brooklyn cell. They said that if the briefers had mentioned anything that startling, it would have gotten their attention."

As a result of the briefing, he said, the commission staff filed document requests with the Pentagon for information about the program. The Pentagon complied, he said, adding that the staff had not hidden anything from the commissioners.

"The commissioners were certainly told of the document requests and what the findings were," Mr. Felzenberg said.

Someone is lying, and I doubt it is the former military intelligence officer. So, we have a cover-up. But even more important than the revelation that our Special Operations Command in TAMPA, was aware of al-Qaeda terrorists (living 45 minutes down the road in Venice) during the time of their flight training, and that they refused to inform the FBI about them, is the realization that they had connected the two San Diego hijackers, to the two WTC pilots.

That's right. Think back. Only two of the hijackers were EVER put on a FBI watch list. Khalid al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi were wanted for their connection to the Cole Bombing through a planning meeting in Kuala Lumpur. Even though one of their names was in the San Diego phonebook, and even though they had lived briefly with an FBI informant, the FBI was unable to find them before 9/11.

Much was made of the CIA's failure to inform the FBI that these men had arrived at Los Angeles Airport after leaving the meeting in Malaysia. But, it was asserted, these known al-Qaeda terrorists were never connected to the guys from Hamburg by our intelligence services.

Now, we know they were linked up using open-source data-mining and reported AS A CELL, within two months of Atta and al-Shehhi arriving in the country.

Flood the subject Jon boy and delete my thread ... but you can not change the facts. Clinton and Clarke knew about Atta in 1999!!! They did not report this to the FBI nor Bush administration. Clinton caused 9/11 period! What is your new conspiracy theory going to be eh?

Flood the subject Jon boy and delete my thread ... but you can change the facts. Clinton and Clarke knew about Atta in 1999!!! They did not report this to the FBI nor Bush administration. Clinton caused 9/11 period! What is your new conspiracy theory going to be eh?

I moved your "Debate" thread over into the "Debate Chamber" where it belongs.

What happened to that Bush loving faggot? I wasn't done wiping the floor with the little prick.

Don't get me wrong, I love bush, just not George Bush.

Hey Jon, whatever it is you know, I'm cautiously optimistic that those Military Coup rumours are true.

Hey Cookie Pussy, those asshole murderers you support so much are going to jail where they belong. You know what happens to treasonous mass murderers in jail don't you??? Same thing that happens to you everynight fuckface.